The hotline just went over the fact that the new government decree #654 has been signed, sealed and delivered thus the accreditation process can now commence (actually I think they said they weren't 100% sure it was delivered but it was on the MOE website which is good enough). The director of our agencies Russia program is right now in Moscow and should be able to get a good sense for how long their reaccreditation will take. They mentioned on the hotline that the process in the past has taken a little over a month, but that the MOE has said they will expedite the process.

For all the folks out there who are farther ahead in the process than we are, I certainly hope that happens. However, I'm going to guess that it will take over a month to get done. That means our agency will get accredited either just before the end of the year or maybe that first week into January.

Even if it takes into mid January, we're still feeling that we'll get a referral fairly quickly (although this is a big unknown and could actually stretch into a few months). Of course once we get a referral and accept it we will be traveling to balmy Siberia right away.

So my updated timing estimate still has us pegged for a fun loving February trip to Omsk (today's high in Omsk is forecasted to be 32 degrees) under the most likely scenario. Worst case I would say would be an April trip as our first visit.

By the way, we're currently researching car seats so I'm writing up a post which I should have done by tomorrow.

"The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it."